


Cataclyscmic

by RileeTheRiddler



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:28:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27592747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RileeTheRiddler/pseuds/RileeTheRiddler
Summary: Tony Stark was looking wildly around himself, turning in midair frantically as if that would reveal the voices in his head. His heart was racing at a pace that would have once killed him and his gasping breaths due to the thin air and panic might have been a cause for concern if the Stones had human bodies. Alas, they were only stones and the trappings of biology were of no concern for them.
Kudos: 8





	Cataclyscmic

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I just found this on my computer and have no memory of writing it but the time stamp says it was last edited on April 26 which is about the time when I gradually came to the realization quarantine was never going to end and therefore I can assume I wrote this while I was drunk off my butt. But let's see where we can take it.

#  CHAPTER 1: 1985, Back to the Future

Anthony Edward Stark (Iron Man, playboy, billionaire, philanthropist, Hero) snapped his fingers to save the universe. The power of the six stones on his gauntleted hand acquiesced to his command and reality was rewritten. Power, more terrible than anything humans or gods were ever meant to wield, coursed through his body and destroyed every last cell. The last thing Anthony Edward Stark saw were the blue eyes of the most important person in his life.

Tony Stark (genius, prodigy, son of the famous Howard Stark) opened his eyes and the first thing he saw were yellow ceilings. There was a dull roaring in the background and a churning in the air. He gasped a breath and bolted upright. He was on a bed in an airplane and there was no one around. A glimpse of eyes out of the corner of his eye had his head snapping around. 

It was a mirror. It was him. It was him as he hadn’t been in years. Young, unscarred, no hair on his face and no line around his eyes. 

Tony felt his breath catch in his throat. The familiar feelings of an anxiety attack started creeping up his spine. He was more than familiar with the feel after the last eight years of living with them. He thought he’d gotten better. 

His caught breath had turned into gasping sobs and something was wrong. There were lights in the air and voices in his head. His life flashed before his eyes and Tony could’ve sworn that was supposed to happen when you died, not after you’d woken up in a younger body. 

He felt a heat gathering in his hands and looked down. His hands were glowing purple. 

What. 

He shook them rapidly, as if they were on fire, and the light shot from his hands straight across the bed and through the wall of the plane. 

Unfortunately, it left a glowing, burning hole in its wake. The dull background roar of air rushing past transformed into a maelstrom of sounds and pressure. An alarm started to go off and airbags dropped from the ceiling. Everything in the room was rushing out through the hole in the wall that was gradually growing bigger. 

Tony grabbed onto the edge of a bolted down chair and scarcely had time to think, “oh, shit” before his hands burned through the upholstery. He tried to catch himself on the jagged metal edges of the plane which only served to tear open his hands and then he was being sucked out of the hole, out of the plane, and into a freefall. 

This, at least, was a marginally more familiar situation to Tony Stark. 

+++++

The personification of the Power Stone took the form of the most powerful person in their wielder's life. For Thanos, it had been Lady Death. For Tony Stark, it was his wife and the mother of his child, Virginia Potts. She existed as but a fraction of a fraction in the mind of Tony Stark but she still tapped her heel clad foot in disapproval as she watched him plumett through the air to his death. 

“Time? Do you mind?” She inquired.

“Certainly,” The personification of the Time stone replied. And with a snap of her fingers, time froze around them. Time, unlike Power, wasn’t concerned with projecting images of power. She was inevitable, like Death. In the mind of Tony Stark, that translated to the ineffable Margaret Elizabeth Carter. 

She floated around in the vastness that was the soul of Tony Stark and admired the man with the audacity to wield her and her siblings. Who gave his life to restore a universe. Who was, at the moment, floating in the air with a private jet above him and the debris of a bedroom around him, with the ground far far below. 

She snapped her fingers again and Tony Stark unfroze, but he didn’t resume falling. She had Space to thank for that. 

Space had been on Earth for a long time and had adopted some of the mannerism of the locals.They materialized next to Time and Power in the mind of Tony Stark in the form of one of the most human people ever known to the genius, Peter Parker. 

He was nattering on about how interesting this would be, how he was so excited to get to experience this from the mind of Iron Man, and could they believe how wild this was. 

Tony Stark was looking wildly around himself, turning in midair frantically as if that would reveal the voices in his head. His heart was racing at a pace that would have once killed him and his gasping breaths due to the thin air and panic might have been a cause for concern if the Stones had human bodies. Alas, they were only stones and the trappings of biology were of no concern for them. 

“Calm down, Tony.” Power ordered. 

“Pep...Pepper? Where are you?” Tony gasped out. 

Power sighed, he was not taking this as well as she’d hoped. As evidenced by the fact he’d managed to almost kill himself within five minutes of awakening in this timeline. 

Reality took that as their moment to shine. Eternally curious and half mad from being locked away in solitude for Ages, their imagination was unparalleled. In the Mind of Tony Stark, that translated to a kid he’d met in the middle of nowhere one Christmas who’d been armed with a loaded potato gun and endless questions. 

Reality had been wandering through Tony’s mind ever since he’d slipped on the gauntlet and took this moment to slip an illusion of themselves into Tony’s consciousness. 

He manifested as Harley Keener in the bright universe that was Iron Man’s mind. Joined on all sides by Power, Time, and Space. Before the four of them, was Anthony Edward Stark, as he’d been the moment before he snapped his fingers. The firing synapses of his brain lit up their surroundings. 

He was staring at them, wild eyed, “Pepper? Peter? Harley?? Aunt Peggy? Is this Heaven!? Did we fail-”

“No, Tony,” Power injected before he could work himself up even further. “You did not fail. You died.”

Tony Stark looked heartbroken, “Then you died as well? But Morgan….”

“Pepper & Morgan Stark are fine. Mourning the loss of you. But unaware and nonexistent if this new moment.” Time said. “We pulled your soul out of there.”

Tony Stark stared at them. “...what?”

“It’s true, darling.” Soul suddenly appeared. The embodiment of life and sacrifice appeared as only appropriate, as a mother. Maria Stark was a beautiful woman, still young when she died. Younger than Tony when he died, at least. 

“Mom?” Tony whispered.

“No, my dear,” Soul whispered. “We take only the forms most familiar to you, but we are not them.”

“What are you?!” Tony demanded, drawing himself up to every inch the Hero he’d been since crawling out of a cave in afghanistan. 

“Do you truly not know?” asked Time with a raised eyebrow.

“Did you not just use our power to rewrite history?” queried Power. 

“Not that we mind, really! It’s just nice to be asked, you know?” added Space. 

“I sort of mind. I mean, I don’t really appreciate being rewritten,” said Reality with beguiling deceit, worsened by his apparent youth.

“Come on, Tony, put that mind of your’s to use. What are we?” came the last voice, seductive and enticing, as all the most forbidden of knowledge was. The Mind Stone had taken manipulation to an artform in the early days of their existence but had developed an appreciation for authenticity recently due to a brief stint in an anthropomorphized robot with a penchant for romance. Here, in the mind of a genius, the Mind Stone thrived. She took on the form of the most manipulative person Tony Stark knew, Natasha Romanoff. 

“No.” Tony denied. “No! You can’t be the stones. They’re just that, stones, Not people!” 

“Ouch, Mr. Stark! That hurt. Right in my heart.” cried Space. “We have feelings too you know. You shouldn’t be so mean.” 

Tony turned his blown out eyes onto what looked like 16 year old Peter Parker. “What?!”

Power intervened. This wasn’t going anywhere. “Tony, you used us. We are a part of you. Not all of us, obviously, but shadows of us have been written into your very being. We can not die and therefore, you, being a part of us, can not die. Your body may perish, as you are still human, but you will not. Do you understand? That’s why you are here now, in this new old time”

Tony turned his gaze from Peter to Pepper and took in what she said. He looked over the faces of some of the most important people in his life and they looked back with unfamiliar gazes. 

He tried to puzzle it out. The six infinity stones were people. Well, maybe not people, but alive in a way Tony hadn’t previously considered. They were in his head, not physically, but shadows of what they could be, mere fractions of the power of the sum of the whole. Somehow, he’d been dragged into his past because his body had died and they couldn’t allow his soul to perish. 

“So I’ve been condemned to an eternity of this in exchange for the survival of my world?” he finally asked. 

“Eternity is only infinite time, Anthony. Nothing to be scared of,”said the Time stone in the cultured british drawl that Aunt Peggy had always spoken in. 

“That’s not what he means, Time. Honestly. He means to ask if he’s stuck like this and never able to see his family ever again.” injected Reality. 

“My darling, Tony, your family is here. Both dead and gone all are here or have the potential to exist here.” Soul added in her a caring, sympathetic tone. 

Tony couldn’t hardly stand to look at any of them. It was all lies. Those weren’t the people he loved. 

“It’s not all bad for you,” Mind said. “Even if we only exist as fragments in your being, we are still the most powerful being in the universe and that power translates.”

“Yes,” Power nodded, taking back control of the conversation. “You shall be able to wield us. It will be up to you to decide how that power manifests. For each of us. You’ve already got mine” She nodded at Tony’s glowing fist. 

Tony thought he might be going into shock. “Okay.” he said. “Fine. This is fine.”

“Alright Mechanic, we’ll be seeing you, I guess.” Reality suddenly said and snapped his fingers. 

Suddenly the wind was whipping past Tony’s ears and the personifications of the infinity stones had disappeared. 

Tony spared a few seconds to mourn the loss of his Iron Man before his mind flooded with clarity. He was approaching terminal velocity with no parachute, no armour, in what looked like his teenage body, with the manifestation of six infinity stones in his mind. 

He’d never thought so fast, so coherently in his life. What were his options, he needed time to think-

And suddenly the wind stopped. As did the falling furniture and the movement of the sun. Time was once again stopped. 

“Very well done, Anthony.” Time whispered in the back of his head. “This is my power to you, the ability to freeze Time.”

“And mine to you, Tony.” Mind murmured next. “Clarity of thought during crisis and rational decision making, something you’ve always struggled with.”

Tony blinked. Okay, he could work with this. The problem, he was suspended in midair thousand of feet above the ground. His plane had a hole in it and was rapidly losing altitude from what he could tell. If he couldn’t maybe go back in time to before the hole….

“No possible” Time added from the back of his head. “You chose the ability to freeze time, not to go back.”

… okay time travel wasn’t an option. What if he was still on the plane? He could patch the hole and maybe.. No that wouldn’t work. He needed to be on the ground.

Tony blinked. He was on the ground. 

“Teleportation? Really, Mr. Stark. So cliche.” Space teased. 

Tony ignored the voices in his head. He was surrounded by trees. His plane was still rapidly descending but it looked controlled from what he could tell. He didn’t think he could help it, even though it was his fault. 

He had to try. 

He imagined himself in the cockpit and there he was, space bending to his will. The pilot and copilot were frantically trying to control the descent and the radio was echoing with calls of “Mayday, Mayday, Ma-” that cut off as Tony snapped his fingers and time froze again. 

Could he teleport objects as large as the plane? He could try.

Tony squeezed his eye’s shut and imagined the plane safely on the ground. A great crashing noise shuddered through the aircraft that threw Tony to the floor and the pilots into their yokes. He opened his eyes and there they were. Safely on the ground. 

Tony felt faint, faintly he heard noises around him and vaguely realized time had restarted. His wrist throbbed. He couldn’t let the pilots tell anyone what he’d done. He’d get locked away, he needed…

“Illusions, Mechanics” giggled Reality. “My specialty.”

Red light seeped out from Tony and saturated the air, focused around the Pilot and co-pilots heads. 

Tony vision was going fuzzy. He touched his face, and his hand came away bloody. From where? Was he bleeding? His knees buckled. 

The last thing he heard was Power’s exasperated voice in his head, “You are still only human, Tony”

++++

Tony Stark woke up in a hospital bed. He knew it before he’d opened his eyes; he was inordinately familiar with the beeping of heart monitors and the smell of disinfectant. 

His eyes opened what should’ve been a familiar sight, interrupted only by the outdated technology surrounding him and a face long dead.

“Aunt Peggy,” Tony croaked. “Is that really you?”

Agent Carter looked up from the file she was reading. She smiled at him, “Anthony, good to see you awake. How do you feel?” She stood and moved to his bedside to put a hand to his cheek. “You gave us quite the scare.”

Tony, who felt like his entire life had been a dream, or rather a fiendish nightmare, blinked up at her. The morphine drip at his side likely was the reason for his discombobulation. 

“What happened?” he asked her.

Agent Carter stroked the cheek of her godson gently, “Your plane crashed. Lucky, you survived little genius. Your parents will be here soon. They're worried sick.”

Tony tilted his head into her hand, he’d always been a creature of affection with the ones he’d loved and trusted. And he’d trusted Aunt Peggy his entire life. 

Until he’d realized she’d kept the secret of his parents death from him, lied directly to his face about it. And built a S.H.I.E.L.D. more Hydra than not. 

His head stilled. He looked up at the gentle face of one of the most powerful women in the world at this moment in time and reevaluated. His mind whirled, half his natural intellect and half the power of the Mind stone helping direct his sometimes fathomless intellect onto a structured, actionabled path. 

As much as he loved her, he didn’t know if he could trust her.

“My darling,” the soul stone whispered in the back of his mind, “You’ve chosen well in my gift to you.”

All of a sudden Tony’s world erupted into colors. Lemony yellow clustered around Aunt Peggy’s heart and red orange clustered around her head. Dark red suffused her entire being. Rather than the harsh colors being threatening, Tony felt genuine concern for him from the yellow, unshakable confidence from the red orange, and the dark red screamed warrior at him. It painted the picture of a ground, self-sufficient woman who cared for Tony greatly. 

As Agent Carter spoke, the colors shifted around her and Tony got lost in watching them swirl around her. Tendrils of gray shot through her aura and Tony’s felt the mistrust wafting of them. He turned back in to hear her say, “...we think it was a targeted attack, Anthony. A bomb that went off, hoping to take you and the plane down with it.”

“Oh,” Tony said. That was a good cover story, better than he could’ve come up with. And it wasn’t like there weren’t people out to kill him and his family. Especially his father in the coming years as he got closer to the secret of the serum. 

His father. And his mother. Who were on their way to see him. Who he hadn’t seen alive in 30 years. He had in fact last seen them being assassinated by the Winter Soldier who was being tortured and brainwashed by Hydra as they spoke. 

“Anthony? Are you alright?” Aunt Peggy asked. She’d let go of his face at some point. “You’re quiet.”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Peggy. Is Jarivs coming?” He changed the subject. Jarvis, the man who raised him, was still alive. Tony couldn’t hardly believe it. He could hardly believe anything thing that happened in the last few moments of his life. From the time travel, to the invasion by Thanos, to snapping his fingers to save the universe, to waking over 30 years in the past with the voices of six infinity stones in his head. Not to mention his new powers. 

“Of course, he’ll arrive with your parents soon. Within the hour. The press is having a field day with the crash. They had to sneak through the back of the airport to even board their plane.”

“What day is it?” Tony asked. 

Agent Carter glanced away from her files to look at him. “It's August 18th. The crash was only yesterday. You were on your way to MIT.”

“...that’s good,” Tony replied. He suddenly remembered that plane ride. He’d taken it alone because his parents had to attend some function and couldn’t drop him off. He’d been furious and hurt with them. Jarvis had driven him to the plane and hugged him tightly before he’d boarded. After, alone in the plane, he shed a few tears before swearing to himself to never be hurt by his parent's absences again. 

That promise hadn’t lasted long. But originally, he hadn’t seen them again until Christmas Eve, when Rhodey forced him to go home for the holidays. 

This time he supposed he’d see them sooner. 

“Anthony, I need to ask. Do you see anything suspicious? A bomb, or a person. A strange emblem, perhaps. Your father has many enemies and I need to know what you know in order to keep you safe.”

“No, I didn’t see anything. Jarvis dropped me off and the pilots were the same as always.” 

“Very well, I need to go. I’ll tell the doctor you’re awake. Get well, soon Anthony. School starts in a week after all.” She leaned over and kissed his forehead, as she’d always done and left, taking her swirl of colors with her. 

Tony thought he’d done well for meeting his first fromely dead family member. That still was probably the morphine talking though. 

++++

While Tony waited for his parents to arrive, his mind whirled though plan after plan. Discarding ideas and fast as he picked them up. He had 35 years to change things. So much had happened but he was so earlier. Why had the stones placed him here? 

He waited. Hoping one of the voices in his head would answer him. They stayed quiet. 

Tony reached for the remote to the television. He needed information. He stopped before he could pick it up, his hands were wrapped in bandages. Tony frowned, how had that happened? Vaguely, a memory of desperately clutching at the ragged edges of an airplane crept up on him.

Oh, right. He clumsily bundled the remote between two hands and managed to turn it on. 

The news clicked on immediately. His face flashing out from it. “Already making headlines” he muttered to himself. The newscaster was rambling on about a tragic plane crash over Connecticut with the Stark heir on board, no word from Stark Industries over his fate, fear the worst, wreckage blocked off by the feds, etcs. 

Tony frowned at the screen. He didn’t want to change things this early. There was no telling the consequences. If a butterfly’s wings could cause a tsunami, there was no telling what a sensationalist plane crash could do. 

The nerves and constant worrying was wearing him down. He felt his eyelids grow heavy. Tony was exhausted. The remote tumbled from his hands as he fell asleep. 


End file.
